The 16-year-old was stabbed to death Tuesday afternoon, marking the first homicide of the year in Oceanside. It also was the latest incident in a neighborhood that has been marred by violence.

“I don’t want any more kids to die,” the boy’s mother, Rosalinda Rodriguez, said in Spanish on Wednesday as family members gathered and grieved in a one-bedroom Crown Heights apartment, about a block from where the teen collapsed after the attack.

Police Lt. Leonard Mata said Wednesday that no arrests have been made in the slaying. Authorities suspect the attack was gang-related. Four of Oceanside’s seven murders last year were gang-related.

Javier’s family said the teen was a student at Ocean Shores High School and was not a gang member.

About 1:45 p.m. Tuesday, officers responded to a report of a stabbing at Center Avenue and Division Street, on the backside of Oceanside High. They found the wounded teenager less than a block away, in the courtyard of an apartment complex on South Weitzel Street, Mata said.

He died later that night at Scripps Memorial Hospital La Jolla.

The teen’s mother said that an hour before the stabbing she had picked Javier up from school, and found him happy and excited. She said he told her that he was going to be honored as student of the month.

After he got home from school, Javier headed down the block to buy a snack from a food truck.

Soon, a neighborhood boy came by and told Rodriguez that Javier — whom she called “Bebo” — had been stabbed.

She said she ran to the scene and begged police to let her get to her son. She was eventually allowed to stand perhaps 10 or 15 feet away. He was unconscious.

“Fight for your life,” Rodriguez said she yelled out to him. “Please, mijo, you are strong. You are young, You have a lot of life to live.”

Rodriguez said police drove her to Scripps Hospital, but she was not allowed to see her son and was later told he had died in surgery.

Javier was the third of her seven children, all boys. As she spoke with a reporter on Wednesday, her youngest, 16-month-old Donmarciano, crouched at her feet.

Rodriguez said she worries for the safety of her other children and wants to see justice for Javier.

As she spoke, a close friend, Maria Perez, came to the front door holding flowers. Perez’s son, 17-year-old Anthony Carachurit-Perez, was shot to death in the same neighborhood last year.

Anthony and Javier were friends.

By Wednesday morning, a small memorial sprang up at the site where Javier had collapsed.